Courtyard Marriott wifi rewriting every web page before you see it

In the “just when you thought you had heard everything” department, it turns out the Courtyard Marriott free wifi comes at a cost. They are taking every web page served and rewriting it, presumably in preparation for injecting their own ads.

I hate ads as much as the next person but the idea that a page is being altered and what I am viewing is not the same as is served on the ‘normal’ internet is quite abhorrent!

The lines of code include references to “rxg,” which stands for Revenue eXtraction Gateway, a service aimed at generating money from Internet access points. On its Web site, a company called RG Nets, which makes Revenue eXtraction Gateway, explains that its system rewrites every Web page on the fly so that it can include a banner ad. “As you can see, the pervasive nature of the advertising banner on all Web pages guarantees banner advertising impression,” a narrator says in the video.